Fat America could use ban on soda

Banning sugary soft drinks could “be considered a serious challenge to personal freedoms,” says Frank Bruni in the New York Times. But as a society, “we’ve gorged and guzzled past the point where a gentle nudge toward roughage suffices; we need a weight watcher willing to mete out some stricter discipline,” he says.

So ban soda for fat America and leave those of us who aren’t fat alone!
You people have far too much time on your hands. If the fatties want to be fat they’ll find another way even if their rights completely disappear thanks to totalitarians like yourselves. Note to fat America–you asked for this when you kept your mouths shut when they banned smoking. Drinkers–you’re next unless we rid ourselves of the nannies.
America–Land of Liberty–we want it back!

With Obama care the responsible and the irresponsible will pay the same for medical care. In the new world order I have a right to protect myself, through government control of your actions, from your exercising poor judgment about your health. The great irony of this state of affairs is that those who promoted Obama care as the moral choice have backed a system where individual morality is superseded by government’s actions

If the government can trust the people to make the right choice for themselves regarding abortion (which some people believe is the murder of unborn human beings), then, surely, the government can trust the people to make the right choice for themselves regarding drinking soda (which no one considers to be murder in any way).

I’d like a little more freedom, and a little less of a “mommy-state,” please.

Skip – You can hardly compare the freedom of choice for having or not having an abortion, with everything else. The dangers of tobacco, (its addictive nature, health destructive properties, the constant need for reinforcement, and the fact that it kills slowly, making it the ideal product if you wish to make money and you don’t care about the harm it causes) have had only minimal effect in ending its availability, and does not speak well for the wisdom and judgement of the average nicotine addict. The abortion issue is far more involved, because the choice we now have (despite the efforts of fanatic religionists and Right-wing absolutists. to limit or end it)negates the unfortunate and desperate choices that women had to make, that drove them to illegal and unsafe back-alley options, or worse.

Those who think the answer is to have the government regulate and ban things surely must think that only the smartest, benevolent and those with the most integrity are in government. The rest of us weren’t born yesterday and know that if you give government this much power to control you they will exercise it well beyond their legal capacity.

I don’t think this is an easy issue but I do know that a large part of our health care dollars go to treating people with preventable diseases i.e. obesity related. Is it a “right” to encourage diabetes and heart disease? If not the government stepping in, who will, the soft drink companies? There is a major epidemic of obesity that is affecting our health care system and economy. It really is a public health issue. If you choose to commit suicide by mouth by all means it is your right but don’t expect the rest of us to fund your medical treatment along the way. With bad choices comes consequences….ask a smoker.

Maybe advocates of a more powerful and intrusive government just don’t value freedom of choice. Maybe they can’t see that people ought to be free to choose for themselves, rather than having government make our choices for us. As for me, I favor freedom over government control.

Soda is under the gun because people are too stupid to stop drinking it on their own. That said, Making it a major concern to protect soda from some restrictions is the business of those selling it and they obviously sell a product that is massively profitable and damaging.

Government is protecting the public good of health, but they have failed so often to protect the pubic good that this makes them just look like they’re flailing, which they are.

So all sides of this debate lost my respect years ago, and I find this territory quite comfortable. Join me in apathy on this issue. Honestly. Who cares?

This “freedom of choice” issue is false. It’s false because you forget there is an industry–a predatory industry–that takes your “freedom” away as well. This is a choice between taking on a predatory food industry (with false food labels, subsidized sugar, constant marketing to kids) and rolling over like some zombie, aenesthesized to the growing premiums due to obesity. Grow up and smell the organic coffee.

Matt, do you believe that people, who are “too stupid” to stop drinking soda on their own, are “too stupid” to be entrusted with voting for the smart politicians who will make those people stop drinking soda?